


Redemption Interlude

by FrostyEmma, soup_illustrations (potofsoup)



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Black Panther (2018) Post-Credits Scene, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Developing Friendships, F/M, POV Character of Color, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Black Panther (2018), Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-17 08:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyEmma/pseuds/FrostyEmma, https://archiveofourown.org/users/potofsoup/pseuds/soup_illustrations
Summary: “God help those poor goats,” he murmured. “They won’t survive a week with me.”A couple of high-pitched giggles caught Shuri’s ears. She turned and spotted a couple of little boys hanging from the branches of the mango tree.“Oh, the goats will be fine.” Shuri grinned. “They have better patience with colonizers than most of the people of Wakanda do.”“That’s comforting.” Barnes frowned slightly. “I guess.”Shuri tilted her head towards the children in the trees. “No, your real worry is going to be finding a way to keep the neighborhood ruffians from swarming around you.”Shuri works on fixing one broken white boy. T'Challa works on fixing Wakanda after the N'Jadaka Incident. And Bucky? He works on living again. (Coconut curry and goats are involved.)Written for Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018 with art by Potofsoup!





	Redemption Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> As the MCU has taught us, stay for the end credits.

When T’Challa brought the broken white boy to her lab – along with a white friend, Captain Rogers, equally broken in different ways – Shuri didn’t hesitate to confront him.

Not like she ever hesitated anyway, but Shuri had been awake for twenty-four hours, and so had reserved a special kind of wide-eyed exasperation for her older (but not wiser!) brother.

“I saw the news, Brother.”

She saw the look in his eyes, saw him mentally square up and prepare to argue with her - over this man, _this_ man! - and she pushed the bile down in her throat and gestured to the window. 

On the other side of it, her technicians worked to patch up the more broken of the two white men. (More physically broken anyway. Anyone with half a brain could see how mentally demolished they both were, but maybe that wasn’t her problem, hmm?)

“That man is the reason our father is dead.”

“Yes.” T’Challa hesitated, far too much emotion embedded in that one word.

Shuri waited.

“Not quite,” he finished.

She raised an eyebrow at that. “Not quite? What do you mean, not quite?” She spread her hands. “He did not quite kill our father? Our father is not quite dead? You are not quite telling me the whole-”

“Sister.” T’Challa held up a hand. “Peace. Please.”

Shuri bit down on the rest of her words. She wasn’t an angry person by nature, but this…

“It’s complicated,” T’Challa offered, but before he could let his gaze go distant, Shuri snapped him right back to reality.

“It’s complicated?” she repeated back to him. “What is this - Facebook?”

T’Challa looked at her. Raised both eyebrows. 

“It’s complicated,” Shuri mimicked, and just barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Just barely. “You bring this man into my lab, expect me to fix him up, and all you can tell me is ‘it’s complicated’?”

If that was the way he explained issues to Nakia, then it was no wonder she had bounced off to Nigeria to investigate child kidnappings. Easier, Shuri suspected, than dealing with her brother.

T’Challa sighed.

Shuri drummed her fingers along the edge of the table. She could wait him out. She was very good at that.

“The truth is complicated,” he finally said.

This time, she did roll her eyes. “Try me.”

He did.

As it turned out, it was complicated. Her brother was right. Not that she would ever admit such a thing. Couldn’t risk his already big head swelling up to the point where he could no longer fit it through his shirts. 

“So let me make sure I fully understand you, Brother,” she said slowly and carefully, with the type of forced patience her mother often utilized when Shuri was working her last nerve. “This tortured man - this tortured, _old_ man - has decided that the only way he can heal from his considerable trauma is to put himself in a freezer?"

T’Challa hemmed and hawed, and Shuri wanted to grab him by his stupid black tunic and shake him. 

Instead, she looked through the window again, appraising this so-called Sergeant Barnes quite differently this time.

“That’s stupid,” she said firmly. “That plan is stupid.” She narrowed her eyes. “Who came up with that plan?”

He raised both hands, palms out. “Not me.”

“It’s a stupid plan,” she repeated. Just in case he hadn’t caught on the first time. 

T’Challa sighed. “It’s not the best plan. I agree. But he wants peace, and if I can offer him some measure of peace…”

Shuri frowned. “But it’s not peace. It sounds like self-imposed punishment from someone too damaged to make a wiser choice.”

Again, T’Challa sighed, and for the first time, Shuri noticed the utter _exhaustion_ in his eyes. 

The broken white boys could wait. 

She leaned her head against her big brother’s shoulder. After a long, quiet moment, she said, “How about you, Brother? What do you want?”

“Right now?” He glanced down at her. “A hot bath, a cup of tea, and a real meal.”

She hummed in thought. “Ndolé?”

He nodded. “Ndolé.”

“With shrimp, I think?”

The smallest of smiles tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You know me so well.”

She snorted without heat. “Well, I am the smarter of the two.”

“Indeed.”

\---

A week after what Shuri termed the ‘N'Jadaka Incident,’ T’Challa received a formal invitation from the Jabari - or rather, M’Baku specifically - to attend a banquet in the great hall of Jabariland.

“To signify the renewed mutual respect and friendship between two great leaders,” Nakia read from the invitation, which had been hand-delivered by two Jabari guardsmen. 

T’Challa had no particular eye for graphic design, but the invitation seemed very tastefully put together all the same.

When the time came, he’d have to match - if not outdo - it.

“Two great leaders.” Nakia hummed and tapped her fingers against the back of the garden swing. “Now who do you suppose they mean?”

T’Challa smiled into his iced hibiscus tea. “You have been spending too much time with my sister.”

“I have not been spending enough time with your sister,” Nakia countered. “Otherwise, I might have pointed out your terrible taste in sandals.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her, a few good comebacks flitting across his mind. Instead, he was immediately distracted by her perfect, plush lips.

She stared back at him. Waiting. 

If the past few weeks had taught him anything, waiting too long was… a uniquely bad mistake… something to be rectified… he wasn’t thinking clearly… he really just wanted to kiss her.

So he did.

“Will you come with me?” he murmured when they had reluctantly pulled apart, her hand still clasped at the back of his neck.

“As your date?” Her fingers scritched gently at his neck, sending a rush of pleasurable shivers down his spine. 

“As my date,” he said lightly. “Maybe as a possible, potential future queen.”

“Possible?” she repeated.

“Potential,” he assured her.

“With an invitation like that,” she smiled, and it was all he could do not to kiss her again, “how could I possibly, potentially say no?”

The Jabari were well and truly vegetarians, and while T’Challa was grateful for both the outreach and the renewed mutual respect and friendship between leaders (whether T’Challa was a great one, well, that remained to be seen), he found himself wishing heartily for beef.

Or even shrimp.

The bufuke, with its thick cream sauce, was quite good though.

He made a mental note to ask M’Baku for the recipe some time in the future. (Perhaps when the mutual respect and friendship had deepened further.)

\---

On a perfectly nondescript Tuesday afternoon, Shuri was 99.9% certain she had removed the so-called trigger words from Sergeant Barnes’ mind.

“99.9% is not entirely certain,” Ayo said.

Shuri smiled, but didn’t look up from the graphic display she was still lightly parsing through. “Science is never 100% certain. If we waited until 100%, we would get nothing done.”

Ayo responded with a snort that made it quite clear she didn’t approve.

“And anyway,” Shuri continued, “you will be with me.”

“Well,” Ayo agreed, “you’re correct about that much.”

The technicians removed Sergeant Barnes from cryofreeze and, at Shuri’s insistence, brought him to a clean and comfortable guest suite. 

A gentle place for him to recover, with one wall made up entirely of a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked lush fields of greenery. 

“I’m quite certain,” Shuri glanced at Ayo, “100% certain, even, that this man has seen the inside of laboratories far too often in his lifetime.”

Ayo raised an eyebrow. “And so?”

“And so let’s give him something new to experience.”

A few hours later - Shuri had passed the time scrolling through some of the crazier designs that had come out of Wakanda Fashion Week - one of her technicians told her that Sergeant Barnes had woken up.

He was sitting up in bed, nursing a glass of cucumber-infused water, when Shuri entered the suite. (Ayo stationed outside, of course.)

“Good afternoon, Sergeant Barnes.” She sat in the chair next to the bed. “Do you know where you are?”

“Wakanda?” He didn’t bother hiding the wariness in either tone or expression.

“Wakanda,” she confirmed.

He bit his lip and looked down into his waterglass. “Still?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Still. Of course.”

A beat of silence passed between them. 

“Of course,” he repeated. “I thought… maybe…”

Shuri waited.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what I thought. Nothing good.”

Shuri pursed her lips. She was no doctor, and it was abundantly clear this man needed a good and compassionate therapist, but Bast’s mercy, he was so _broken_.

She had to try.

“You can stay in Wakanda for as long as you like,” she said gently. “You’re safe here.”

Another beat of silence.

Finally he said, “How long was I out?”

“For a while.” She thought about it for a moment. “Two, nearly three weeks, I would say.”

Disbelief landed on his face and settled there. “Three weeks?”

She shrugged. “We had a family affair, you know. An incident.”

The less said about the N’Jadaka Incident, the better. It was the sort of tragedy Shuri wasn’t quite ready to unpack. Easier, she decided, to deal with this broken white boy.

“I… just…” Sergeant Barnes frowned into the remains of his cucumber water. “You undid seventy years of mental fuckery in three weeks.”

Shuri smiled. “Like I said, we had an incident. Otherwise, I think I might have done it in a week. Perhaps ten days.”

When he didn’t reply to that, she added:

“Would you like something to eat? A stew or curry, perhaps? You look like a man who enjoys quite a bit of protein.”

\---

Over the next few days, Sergeant Barnes continued to recover in the guest suite.

According to the nursing staff, he was very polite, ate whatever was put in front of him, and made absolutely no requests, even when prompted to do so. 

One of the nurses - M’Penda - drew a bath, coaxed Barnes into it, and washed his hair for him. And again, according to the report, he offered no argument, politely thanked M’Penda when he finished washing Barnes’ hair, and that was that.

“I think he’s in shock,” M’Penda offered. 

Well, that would not do at all.

Shuri swept into the room, finding Barnes still sitting on the edge of the bed like a carven stone statue. His hand rested on his right knee, and his eyes stared at a spot on the wall that was unremarkable and indistinguishable from anything around it.

What was he seeing?

“You’ll wear a hole in the wall with a stare like that,” she offered, standing a step inside the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her.

He glanced at her and offered the sort of half-smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “I’ll pick a different spot then. Don’t want you to have to repair the wall.”

She cocked her head to one side and fixed him with a look she might have given a headstrong child. Or her brother, when he was being particularly mulish.

“There is a paradise right outside your room." 

She gestured at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond lay a breathtaking view of the lovingly tended greenery, dotted here and there with tiny explosions of color where the wildflowers grew. 

“And I find you trying to stare through the paint instead.”

She shook her head, a small smile coming over her face, and crossed the room to stand before him.

“No,” she said, taking his hand gently but firmly and tugging at it slightly. “You need fresh air and the smell of growing things, not a closed door and unpleasant thoughts.”

He allowed her to lead him out the door and out of the building into the bright, hot afternoon sun and the lush green of the garden.

Somewhere between the door and the garden, he had left his slippers behind, and he stood barefoot in the grass. He closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the sun.

After a moment, he murmured, “I didn’t think I’d feel this again. I wasn’t sure I’d have the chance.”

Something about the way in which he said it made her want to take him in her arms like a weeping child. He had seen too much horror, too much sorrow, and while her cleverness and her machines had been able to free his mind from his captors’ clumsy shackles, freeing it from the weight of his own experiences was a trick even beyond her.

“And now that you have the chance?” she ventured.

“And now that I have the chance…” He peeked at her from the corner of his eye. “What?”

She looked sidelong back at him with a look of slight impatience such as she might give her brother in one of his more obtuse moments. 

“What will you do with it?” She gestured again at the rampant green. “Enjoy it? Experience it? Revel in it?” She raised an eyebrow. “Or simply sit in wonder at having it, and miss it while it sits right in front of you?”

She took his hand again, shaking her head with a smile and pulling him onward. “Come on.”

\---

T’Challa sat at a small table on a shaded balcony, lingering over a plate of fluffy lime cake squares and a glass of iced hibiscus tea.

Lime cake had long been his favorite. His most-often requested dessert as a small boy, and the dessert he still reached for when he wanted a taste of comfort. Or when the sweet tooth bit him.

Or any reason, really. 

He nibbled at a square of cake and read over Nakia’s proposal for the Wakandan outreach centers, the first of which would open in N’Jadaka’s boyhood home of Oakland, California in the United States.

Best not to linger over thoughts of N’Jadaka for too long.

The proposal was a good one, carefully written and outlined, down to budget and staffing details, and he was just about to type a reply on his tablet when a shadow fell over the already shaded balcony.

Okoye.

“Your Majesty.” She crossed her arms in greeting, her eyes never flickering from his. “There are matters to discuss.”

He returned the gesture, then beckoned to the plate of cakes. “Can I tempt you?”

“With sweets?” One eyebrow arched slightly, but the rest of her face remained impassive. “Hardly. But perhaps with news. Have your meetings with these foreign leaders been productive? Or are they simply more white men listening to themselves chatter?”

A small smile drifted across his face. “On the nose, as always. Would you believe both?”

“I would not.” She scoffed. “How anything ever gets accomplished beyond our borders I will never know.”

The smile lingered on his face. “At least have some hibiscus tea. Made inside our very own borders, no less.”

Her lips twitched in a smile for the first time. “And what it should be elsewhere I shudder to think.” She took a glass for herself, drank, and finally sat down in the seat across from him.

T’Challa sipped at his own tea. “So I take it this is not just a social call? You’ve more on your mind than mere pleasantries?”

“The only one who ever thinks my visits are pleasant is you.” She narrowed her eyes at him, but couldn’t keep her lips from pursing into another smile. “And even you would not go so far as to call me ‘social’.”

He nibbled on a square of cake in response.

“There are still matters to iron out from the N’Jadaka affair.” Her face grew stony. “Matters such as W’Kabi. If it were up to me, I would leave him in the dungeon until his hair grew to his knees, but I know that is not your way.”

T’Challa set the cake down and looked at Okoye for a long moment. 

The N’Jadaka affair - incident - whatever they chose to call it - was going to linger in the collective consciousness for a very long time. No amount of not wishing to dwell on it would change that. And, if he were perfectly honest with himself, not dwelling on it - pretending that it had never existed, never happened - was exactly what had led to the situation to begin with.

“W’Kabi was like a brother to me.” He sighed. “And even more important to you. Are you really so ready to make such a determination about him?”

“He was ready to run me down,” she retorted without hesitation, her eyes smoldering. “I, at least, am willing to deal with him in a way that leaves him breathing.”

T’Challa found he had no response for that.

He wondered if and when he would.

\---

Some days later, Shuri dropped in to check on her patient again. 

He had lost his unkempt and scraggly look; his hair was clean and untangled, and the bristles on his face and neck had grown out into the beginnings of a beard. But his movements were still quick and jerky, like those of a hunted animal, and his eyes were still wary and alert.

“Am I going to have to keep coming back every other day to persuade you to go outside?” She shook her head, smiling. “There is nothing out there that will hurt you, and a good deal that can help you.”

“Nothing that can hurt _me_ , no.”

At least he was sitting in a comfortable chair by the window this time, instead of sitting on his bed and staring at the wall.

“Then what?” she asked gently, coming over to the chair and leaning against it with her hip. She resisted the urge to reach out her fingertips to touch his hair, but he seemed to need some kind of comforting gesture.

He breathed in softly. “How do you really know?” A hesitation, then, “Not to doubt your scientific expertise - you’re clearly very… _very._ But how do you know the sequence is actually gone?”

“I checked it, of course.” She swiveled her head to look down at him. “And you don’t want to know how long I was sitting there doing it. There are 86 billion neurons in the human brain, and over seven thousand synaptic pathways per neuron. My computers triple-scanned each and every one, and I never let a computer do work that I can’t verify.” She cocked an eyebrow. “I spent days on end making sure that there is nothing in your brain that isn’t yours.”

Of course, the things that could really hurt him were the things that were most deeply his own. But she didn’t tell him that. He needed to heal, and fear would only make him draw in upon himself.

“Was that what you were afraid of?” She knelt down beside his chair, resting her elbows on the plush arm and leaning her chin on her hands. “That you would be a danger to us?”

His gaze drifted to the window, and for a moment, Shuri thought he might not answer. But then abruptly he looked back at her.

“I spent two years trying to avoid…” He hesitated, seemed to swallow a word down, then said, “Anybody, really. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I didn’t want to kill anybody. I didn’t want any of that anymore.”

His gaze drifted away again.

Quietly, he added, “And it happened anyway.”

This time she did reach out and stroke his hair. The poor man needed _something_ , after all.

“You have met some truly terrible people in your time, Sergeant Barnes.” She shook her head. “And I know just how badly you were treated by them. But they are the ones who forced you to do those things. You didn’t choose any of it.”

He leaned into her hand ever-so-slightly. “They might have been directing me. But I’m still the one who did it.”

“Yes,” she nodded, her hand still gently stroking his hair. It was soft and smooth and entirely unlike any hair she’d ever touched. “And I only wish I could have taken that pain away from you along with the last of their tinkering.” 

She sighed. 

“But I can’t. All I can tell you is that no one has any power over you anymore. You have your mind and your body back again, all to yourself, and only you can choose what to do with it.” She smiled softly. “So are you going to choose to hide away in here and stare at the paint again? Or are you going to go outside and find something new to stare at?”

He snorted without heat. “Well, when you put it that way…”

\---

The meeting of the Council of Elders had adjourned ten - perhaps fifteen - minutes ago, and T’Challa hadn’t moved from the throne yet. Not from the joy or even considerable awe of sitting there at all, but because he felt well and truly too exhausted to move. 

W’Kabi had been conspicuously, heart-clenchingly absent. 

The Border Tribe had chosen a new leader, and the tribe itself seemed eager enough to put the previous incident behind them and move forward. W’Kabi was not spoken of, even if Okoye had thrown T’Challa a few sidelong glances during the (overly long, utterly exhausting) meeting.

T’Challa poked the komoyo beads around his wrist and considered… ordering food, perhaps? He wasn’t sure, and he was saved from having to decide by the sudden entrance of Shuri.

“Sister, what a pleasant surprise.” He smiled, then quickly managed to work the expression into a wary frown. “What are you up to?”

“Much more than you, it looks like.” She grinned at him, her hands clasped behind her back. “Who would ever want to be King, when the job is mainly sitting in an uncomfortable chair and presiding over long and boring discussions?”

T’Challa raised an eyebrow, but he couldn’t hold the frown. 

“This throne is extremely comfortable, I’ll have you know. So comfortable that I haven’t moved from it in hours.” He shook his wrist, gently rattling the komoyo beads. “I was just now thinking of ordering a pillow and blanket so that I may sleep here.”

“Oh, rhino droppings.” Shuri shook her head, laughing. “If you ordered a pillow, it would be to sit on. That chair would raise bruises on the backside of a tortoise.”

The words ‘and how would you know?’ _almost_ left his mouth, but of course, he already knew the answer to that. She had been sneaking onto the throne since she was a little girl.

And anyway, she wasn’t wrong.

“Well, I suppose I could just slide off of it and sleep on the floor, but,” he smiled, “I think that might concern Mother.”

“And why not?” Shuri grinned again, irrepressibly. “If she found you sleeping on the floor when you have a perfectly serviceable bedroom.” 

Even more than perfectly serviceable if, perhaps in the very near future, Nakia would consider joining him there.The thought made him smile, and so he abruptly shoved it aside. 

He was in front of his sister, after all. 

Shuri laughed once more, then beckoned in the direction of the door. “At any rate. There’s someone here who would like very much to see you.”

“Not W’Kabi?” he heard himself say, before he could even consider the words or the fact that Shuri was smiling and laughing.

“What?” Shuri’s smile vanished, and she seemed brought up short. “No. Why would I…” She shook her head sharply. “He’s a snake. Let him stay down there in his hole while the rest of us rebuild what he tried to destroy.”

T’Challa sighed.

Shuri looked at him with suddenly serious eyes. “He would have been glad to see you dead, Brother. Why can you not stop waiting eagerly for him to walk through the door and embrace you?”

Another sigh. He couldn’t help it. 

“He was like a brother to me.” T’Challa pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wish I could just lock him away and be done with him, but it’s not quite so easy, Sister.”

“Well, it was easy enough for him to be done with you!” Shuri folded her arms and looked across at him. “And even if you did forgive him and release him, what then? Would you ever be able to trust him again? Or would you always have to look over your shoulder and sleep with one eye open?”

Yet another sigh. He seemed to be full of them today.

“Oh.” He perked up slightly, remembering the actual point of their conversation. “You said someone wanted to see me, and judging by the look on your face, it seemed to be a good someone.”

She rolled her eyes. “As though I would bring you a bad someone, Brother.” She gestured at the figure who was lopsidedly approaching. “Come in, Sergeant Barnes.”

It had been a few weeks since T’Challa had seen Barnes. 

Oh, he had known that Shuri had taken him out of cryofreeze, of course, but she seemed to have a plan of action in mind, and T’Challa had been content to leave her to it while he attended to his numerous responsibilities.

Barnes looked good, though. Cleaner, certainly. Obviously well-fed. A bit lopsided, true, but Shuri would take care of that in due time. (Certainly she would revel in such a project.) He hadn’t lost the haunted look in his eyes, but after several decades of mistreatment, such healing would take more than a few weeks.

He stopped in front of the throne and hesitated, clearly uncertain of what to do next.

“You look well,” T’Challa offered gently.

A ghost of a smile drifted across Barnes’ lips. “Somewhat.”

“Of course he looks well,” Shuri interjected with a smile. “I’ve been dragging him outside so the greenery can improve his health.” She lifted an eyebrow, giving Barnes a sidelong look. “And besides, you should see how much he eats.”

Barnes shrugged. “They keep bringing it to me.”

“Out of wonder, if nothing else.” Shuri laughed easily and smiled at Barnes. “I’ve been wondering myself how it’s even possible for a man to eat that many bowls of coconut curry and still survive.”

“I hold out for the dessert mangos,” he replied. “Sometimes they serve them with ice cream.”

The easy banter between Shuri and Barnes was a wonder to see, considering how horribly broken Barnes had been not even a scant few months ago. 

Perhaps that had been all Shuri’s doing? It wouldn’t have surprised T’Challa in the slightest. She had a way not just with technology, but people, too.

“You seem to be adjusting easily, Sergeant Barnes,” he offered. “What might you like to do next?”

“Next?” Barnes echoed.

T’Challa smiled. “I imagine you might get bored of living in a guest suite, no matter how spacious.”

Barnes’ eyes widened slightly at that.

“I’m not bored,” he said quickly, and then before T’Challa could stop him, he knelt down before him and bowed his head.

T’Challa had not expected this.

“If anything,” Barnes said quietly, “I’m grateful. Grateful for everything you and your sister have done for me. Grateful for your staff who have tolerated me. Grateful to be here at all.” A moment passed, then he murmured, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“You’re very welcome, Sergeant Barnes,” T’Challa replied, sliding off his throne and helping Barnes to his feet in one smooth motion. “But please, get up. There’s no need of that right now.”

“Nobody kneels to anybody in Wakanda,” Shuri smiled, coming up beside Barnes. “Except in a ceremonial capacity, of course. Or when helping somebody tie their shoes.”

“And you’re wearing slippers,” T’Challa pointed out. “So no need even for that.”

“Haven’t quite mastered one-armed shoe-tying yet,” Barnes murmured. “And the nurses keep offering to brush my hair, so I haven’t even needed to do that yet.”

“Well, of course they are,” laughed Shuri. “They want the chance to touch it. It’s so different from ours, after all.”

“And look at this.” T’Challa spread his hands in mock surprise. “I’m actually on my feet. Finally. And quite hungry. And my schedule is clear for the remainder of the evening.”

Praise be to Bast.

“Let’s dine together,” he suggested. “I’d like to see with my own eyes how many bowls of coconut curry one man can truly put away.”

As it turned out, quite a lot.

\---

A few conversations with the people of the River Tribe had ended up bearing fruit. 

Shuri had made it her business to go out and find ways to get Sergeant Barnes out of his rooms and into nature. After all, there was more than enough work for her to do - work that had been slipping since she’d taken an interest in Barnes. Not that she regretted reaching out to him, of course, but it was high time for him to be going outside under his own steam. 

Or if not his own, then someone else’s other than hers.

And so she’d made some inquiries, spoken to some people - mostly the old women of the River Tribe, who agreed that the white boy needed something to get him moving again and someplace to start from - and finally gotten a small patch of land and a hut set aside for him.

“This is yours,” she said proudly to Barnes when she’d finally brought him there. “A small patch of ground to till, a few trees for shade and fruit, and enough grass for a few goats to graze comfortably.”

Barnes’ eyes widened slightly. “A farm?”

“A small one,” she elaborated. “Just enough to give you something to do, not nearly enough to overwhelm you.”

“God help those poor goats,” he murmured. “They won’t survive a week with me.”

A couple of high-pitched giggles caught Shuri’s ears. She turned and spotted a couple of little boys hanging from the branches of the mango tree. 

“Oh, the goats will be fine.” Shuri grinned. “They have better patience with colonizers than most of the people of Wakanda do.”

“That’s comforting.” Barnes frowned slightly. “I guess.”

Shuri tilted her head towards the children in the trees. “No, your real worry is going to be finding a way to keep the neighborhood ruffians from swarming around you.”

One of the boys shrieked and ducked his face behind the leaves when he realized that Shuri had spotted him. He couldn’t quell his laughter though.

A smile flitted across Barnes’ face. “I might have better luck with the ruffians than the goats. They’ll at least tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“More likely they’ll just laugh.” Shuri let out a chuckle of her own, at both Barnes and the boys. “But I think this will do well for you. At the very least, it will keep you outdoors and moving.” She raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Instead of sitting indoors staring holes in the walls.”

“Well,” Barnes shrugged, “I could always sit inside my new house and stare some holes into those walls.”

His gaze strayed almost longingly to the hut. That was a good start, then.

\---

A miniature, scale model of the potential Wakandan outreach center in Oakland, USA hovered in the palm of T’Challa’s hand. 

“It would need much work.” He rotated the building, examining it at all angles. “I believe the building might have been condemned, but you see that it is a suitable size.”

“Very suitable,” smiled Nakia, sliding an arm around his waist. “And if it’s been condemned, we’ll simply have to knock it down and build a better one. The location is the important part.”

T’Challa shook his head. “Perhaps we’ll gut it, or perhaps our architects will find some way to make it suitable.”

He frowned slightly and spun the building around a few more times, mostly to give him a moment to gather his thoughts.

Finally, he murmured, “It was his childhood home, you see. He was raised there.”

“I didn’t know,” she replied softly, and was silent for a while. 

He rotated the building a few more times until Nakia put her hand over his palm and the image flickered and disappeared. 

Her other arm tightened around him, and her head nestled against his shoulder. “But all we do there will be with the aim of preventing any more children from following down his path.”

He hummed in response, then turned his head slightly, the curls of her hair tickling his nose. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the warm scent of her - coconut oil and frangipani and something vaguely spicy that he couldn’t quite place.

More than likely, she was waiting on him to reply to her very solemn, quite important statement. And so he rallied himself, prepared to say something important and kingly.

“You smell nice,” was what came out instead.

“So do you,” she murmured into his neck, nuzzling her face closer to him and smiling against his skin. “But you’re getting distracted from the matter at hand.”

He smiled. “But I’m not at all distracted from the very nice matter _in_ my hands.”

“You’re impossible.” She lifted her head from his shoulder and gave him an exasperated - but very satisfied - smile, before rolling over bodily on top of him. “How are you ever going to run Wakanda if you’re so easily distracted?”

“Well,” he raised both eyebrows and ran his hands up and down the length of Nakia’s smooth back, “I suppose you’ll just have to be around. To keep me focused. On things.”

“Oh?” She raised her own eyebrows in response, her smile turning playful. “As a possible, potential future queen?”

“Oh yes.” He let his hands drift down a little further. “As a possible, potential future queen. If you are so amenable.”

“Haven’t I been _amenable_ so far?” She wriggled against his questing hands.

“Quite amenable.” He gave her backside a little squeeze, enjoying the way it made her wriggle just a little bit more. “But perhaps will have to keep doing exactly what we’re doing. To make sure we’re both amenable, of course.”

She smiled and brought her perfect lips to his. “Of course.”

Clearly the rest of the afternoon was going to be quite unproductive, so far as business matters went. But he supposed that was the downside to holding an important meeting in bed.

Not that he was complaining.

Oh no, not at all.

\---

A week later, Shuri had indeed gotten back to work. 

And some very good work, at that. She’d spent nearly every waking hour in her laboratory, and more than a handful of her sleeping hours as well, to the point where her assistant M’Penda had needed to shake her by the shoulder and gently nudge her in the direction of her room. But good work had gotten done.

Still, after a week’s worth of progress, Shuri had to admit that she missed Sergeant Barnes. And with her own work ahead of schedule by quite a ways, she could certainly justify a quick visit out to the riverside. If for nothing more than a quick hello and an appraising glance at his progress in tilling and herding.

Of course, a few of the old women of the River Tribe had been acting as Sergeant Barnes’ unofficial handlers, mostly to ensure that Barnes didn’t starve and die on their watch. 

According to them, the white boy could not cook (so they fed him) and didn’t know the first thing about farming (though he was eager to learn), but he was good with the children, who had taken an immediate liking to him.

Also, apparently they found his name too unwieldy and had decided on a different one.

When she got to his small plot of land, she found the goats meandering listlessly about their pen. A square of land had apparently been set aside for farming, as it had clearly been recently plowed under the careful guidance of - or, more probably, by - the women of the River Tribe.

Barnes himself was nowhere to be found, but the giggles that emanated from his hut told her what she needed to know. And when she approached, two boys and a girl came running out, laughing.

“Are you playing around with that man again?” she chided gently, smiling at them as they gathered around her and hugged her waist. “You’re teasing him again?”

“No!” the children laughed, one of them adding, “He’s sleeping again! White Wolf is sleeping!”

“He’s just lying there!” one of the boys said cheerfully. 

The sole little girl giggled. “He looks like a meerkat when he sleeps!”

“Don’t wake him,” Shuri admonished them gently, though she couldn’t help but giggle herself at the thought of Barnes sprawled out with his limbs every which way like a meerkat. “He must rest.”

“He does that a lot!” the one named Thabo said. “He sleeps a lot!”

“He makes funny faces when he eats stew!” the girl added. “His eyes get all big!”

Thabo giggled. “Sometimes they water!”

“Go,” Shuri laughed, shaking her head and waving them away. “Go now.”

And the children did go, still giggling and calling “White Wolf! White Wolf!” over their shoulders as they disappeared.

Barnes came out of his hut a moment later, clad in a long wrap with the top part of his hair tied up into a knot at the back of his head. The rest of his hair tumbled in curls down to his shoulders. He wore a dark blue shawl draped over his left shoulder to cover the stump of his missing mechanical limb.

She’d have to get to work on that as well. Sooner or later.

“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” she said in greeting, offering a small smile.

“Bucky,” he said simply.

She nodded, recalling Captain Rogers’ insistence upon calling him that. With any luck, it signified an increased level of relaxation and comfort with his surroundings. 

There was only so much her machines had been able to do, after all, and none of it had involved healing the deep wounds left by so many rewritings of his mind over the decades. He’d had little reason to be anything but suspicious and guarded around anyone, and she was glad to see that defensiveness easing.

“How are you feeling?” she asked gently.

“Good.” He said the word very quickly, but then his eyes met hers and after a moment, he murmured, “Thank you.”

She smiled in response, glad that she had been able to give him the simple things he needed to begin his recovery. And perhaps, now that he seemed to be doing so much better, she could even give him more.

“Come,” she chuckled softly, patting him on the chest as she walked past him. She knew he would follow. “Much more for you to learn.”

And his friends would be eager for news of him.

They walked along the banks of the river for hours, during which time Shuri talked to him at length about the history of Wakanda. About the reasons for its secrecy, about the trials they had all gone through despite their self-imposed seclusion. And about her brother’s newfound resolve to reach out a helping hand to the world around them in its hour of great need.

Barnes - _Bucky_ , she corrected herself - had remained quiet but attentive. He’d let her do most of the talking, but he’d paid careful attention and prompted her with occasional questions and observations as well. And after two hours had come and gone, Shuri brought up the larger issue at hand.

“It’s been some time since your friend brought you here.” She turned to him, sipping her chilled tea. They sat on a rough wooden bench beside the river. A woman had graciously brought out drinks for them from inside her home.

Bucky frowned into his own glass. A rivulet of condensation ran down its side and over the fingers of his hand. “Steve?”

Shuri nodded. “Would you like me to call him?”

Another beat of silence passed between them, and then Bucky said, “Why?”

She raised her eyebrow and set down her glass. “Because he’s your friend, and he seemed very concerned about you.” Her eyebrows knitted. “In fact, he probably thinks you’re still frozen. He should at least know that you’re up and about, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t look up from the glass.

“You don’t know?” The arch in her eyebrow grew substantially more pronounced. “He thinks we’ve still got you in cold storage, and you don’t know?”

Bucky said nothing.

She studied him for a moment, trying to read his face. All she got, though, was deep discomfort.

“Why?” she said after a while.

Another long beat of silence stretched between them, and she was just about to attempt to probe further, when he spoke.

“The last few times we’ve seen each other,” he said slowly and haltingly, “there’s been… violence.” Quietly he added, “There’s always violence.”

Shuri thought she understood, and it made her heart ache in sympathy. The horrible and cruel things that his captors had done to him over the years had caused him to attack even his closest and dearest friend, and even now that she’d assured him that all their tampering was gone - even after they had sat together in her lab and tested the words, one by one by one - he was still afraid.

Why were men so cruel outside of Wakanda?

“There will not be violence this time,” she promised, turning in her seat to face him directly. “Not if neither of you wishes there to be.”

Several expressions darted across Bucky’s face then - confusion, anxiety, perhaps even longing, before settling on remorse.

“He lost everything because of me. His team, his home, his standing.” He shook his head. “Everything.”

This time Shuri’s eyebrows lowered, and her eyes narrowed. She’d heard plenty from her brother about the incidents surrounding Bucky and Captain Rogers, and one thing was for certain.

“Nothing that happened to Captain Rogers happened because of you,” she said firmly. “That was the result of fear, and of ill-considered laws in response to ill-considered actions. Not you.”

Bucky laughed suddenly, finally looking up into Shuri’s eyes. “How are you only sixteen?”

She laughed so quickly that she snorted, and clapped a hand to her mouth a second too late. “We have better schools here,” she finally said when her laughter had subsided.

“Clearly.” He drained off the last of his tea. “I have memories - impressions, mostly - of what school was like, and it was obviously nothing like what you have here.” He frowned slightly. “I think it was mostly about crowd control.”

“Yes, well.” She laughed softly. “You went to school the better part of a century ago, didn’t you?” 

His gaze drifted toward the river and he shook his head in wonder. “God, it really was that long ago. I must’ve finished school sometime in the mid-1930’s.”

She smiled. “And Captain Rogers seems to have come through it all right. He was your schoolmate, wasn’t he?”

“He was mostly interested in art.” Bucky snorted. “And civics, probably.”

“And you,” Shuri prodded, nudging him back onto the topic he’d tried to abandon. “Which means you owe him at least the news that you’re awake and healing.”

Bucky’s smile faded. “We don’t…” He licked his lips. “We don’t know each other anymore. He has his life, and… I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“He knows you,” she pressed. “And he certainly cares about you, or else he wouldn’t have done what he did.” She reached out a hand and laid it on his forearm, feeling muscles as solid as old tree limbs beneath his skin. “But you’re still afraid, aren’t you?”

He didn’t deny it, answering with a simple “Yeah.”

“You will need to confront that fear.” She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “Or, instead of staring at the wall for hours on end, you’ll end up sitting right here and staring at the river instead.”

Bucky scowled. Not necessarily at her, but there it was. “I know he cares about me, okay? He shouldn’t, but he does. But we don’t know each other anymore.” He shook his head. “We haven’t had an actual conversation in… well, who knows?”

“Well.” Shuri’s smile broadened. “No better time than now, then. Right?”

“Fuck,” Bucky said instantly, and Shuri suppressed a giggle. “I suppose it won’t help if I say he didn’t leave me with a phone number?”

“Not in the slightest.” The giggle didn’t stay suppressed for long. “But, points for trying.”

“Fine.” Bucky stared out at the river. His expression softened. “I’ll talk to him. I don’t know what I’ll say. But I’ll talk to him.”

“You’ll figure it out as you go along,” she said, standing up and smoothing her skirts down. She looked back at him with a smile.

One broken white boy, almost fixed. 

Not bad for a first attempt.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> It was a pleasure collaborating with Potofsoup ([tumblr](http://potofsoup.tumblr.com)) once again for my second turn at Captain America Reverse Big Bang. I love her expressive art style, and I especially love the warm, sweet T'Challa/Nakia pic! RBB is such a fun challenge. I've enjoyed it for two years now, and so here's to next year!
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> As always, thanks to my forever beta reader and cheerleader, Firebirdscratches. My dialogue would be a lot more melodramatic and overly wordy without her. And also thanks to Potofsoup, who offered to give it a second beta read and picked up on a... pretty critical plothole. LOL forever, of COURSE Shuri and Bucky would have run through the trigger words one by one. Thanks for that!
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> So Bucky and Steve didn't actually SPEAK to each other. That means there is a sequel coming. Because dammit, those two need to talk to each other. 
> 
> NOTE THE FOURTH  
> As always, questions, comments, and kudos are the endless bowls of hearty curry stew to writers! (Terrible metaphor.)
> 
> POTOFSOUP'S NOTE  
> Thank you, Emma, for your infinite patience as I slid the art in at the very last second. Thank you, also for dealing with my surprise!comments with such grace. It's been a pleasure to work with you for a second RBB! <3 <3 <3


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